In 1942 at the centre point of the Second World War an extraordinary event took place not on the battlefield but in a municipal stadium in Kiev. A match was arranged between a German Luftwaffe side and a team of impoverished Kievans from a local bakery - FC Start - that became the subject of legend. This is the true story of courage, team loyalty and fortitude in the face of the most brutal oppression the world has ever seen.
When Hitler initiated Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, he caught the Soviet Union completely by surprise. At breathtaking speed his armies swept east, slaughtering the ill-prepared Soviet forces and conquering the Ukraine. Ukraine's capital, Kiev, was circled, assaulted and overrun, and among the city's defenders who were captured and incarcerated were many of the members of the sparkling 1939 Dynamo Kiev football team, arguably the best in Europe before the war.
Captured Kiev was a starving city whose population was deported in vast numbers as slave labour. However, one man determined to save not just the surviving players from the Dynamo side, but other athletes. He offered them work, shelter, and most valuable of all, bread, as workers in his bakery. Inspired by the charismatic goalkeeper Trusevich, the Dynamo side was re-formed as FC Start, and a series of fixtures was arranged, all of which the team won handsomely. To such an extent that they raised Kievan spirits.
FC Start's final fixture against the Luftwaffe was agreed by the German authorities: a well-fed team from the Fatherland would vanquish the upstart Ukrainians, especially if the game we refereed by an SS officer. The match was an allegory of resistance; its consequences were brutal.
Andy Dougan has discovered the truth behind a legendary encounter, sorting fact from fiction and restoring to the centre of World War Two a moment of extraordinary poignancy and complex bravery.
